by Greg Herren
The Xanax had worn off during the night, but I didn’t feel the need to take another. I was a little foggy from lack of sleep and probably a residual drug hangover, so it was nice to have something to keep my mind occupied and off other things. Filing requires some focus and concentration, but not a great degree of analytical thinking. Well, that was the theory at least. I started sorting papers and refiling them into the folders they originally came from, and once everything was in its proper file, I organized each file before putting it back into the cabinet.
Nothing was missing, which I didn’t understand. Everything I had in my file for Iris was still there. What the hell had they been looking for?
What nerve had my investigation touched?
Venus had made a pretty convincing argument that Percy Verlaine had not been behind the Upstairs Lounge fire. I had no evidence—only a gut feeling based on nothing more than the fact that Catherine was certain the day Michael disappeared was also the day of the fire. It was just hard for me to believe a gay man could disappear so completely off the face of the earth on that very day and not have the two events be connected. Two plus two equals four. But I also had no proof that any of the Verlaines had known that Michael was even gay—other than Margot. Did it stand to reason that Margot would have confided the truth about her husband to her father—a man who obviously did not approve of her marriage? Venus was probably right; I was trying to connect Percy Verlaine to the fire because I didn’t like the wretched old homophobic bastard. And while it stood to reason Michael was one of the unidentified victims, it was unlikely I’d ever be able to prove it. And that was that.
But I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Call it instinct, gut feeling, whatever—I was certain I was right. Catherine Hollis was the key. I was also positive if I could just get her to open up to me, she’d be able to tell me the truth. She’d been locked up in that mental hospital for over thirty years— Venus was right, she wouldn’t make a credible witness unless I could somehow prove she had never belonged there, which again would be impossible. Surely, though, if there truly wasn’t anything wrong with her, why would they lock her up? It might have been embarrassing to the family to admit that Michael had been gay, but if anything, Margot would have been seen herself as a victim of a fortune hunter who’d lied to her.
Unless somehow Catherine knew Percy was behind the fire.
But that would be next to impossible to prove. She was under lock and key and watched; she certainly hadn’t been willing to tell me any of her secrets. Why would she tell anyone else?
*
I finished reorganizing the files and had just put the last one back into the cabinet when there was a knock on my front door. “Hang on a minute,” I shouted, “who’s there?”
“It’s me, Allen.”
I muscled the couch away from the front door. I glanced through the blinds, and opened the door.
“Hey.” Allen smiled weakly at me. He looked like he’d slept about as well as I had. He looked around. “Do you always keep your couch in front of the door?”
“I had a break-in yesterday. I was just straightening up. Whoever did it took out my deadbolt.” I shrugged. “So I put the couch there.”
“Oh man, that sucks.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Have a seat. You want anything to drink? I can make coffee or something.”
He plopped down on the couch, spreading his legs wide. “No, if I drink any more coffee I’ll turn into Juan Valdez. Thanks, though.”
An awkward silence fell over both of us. I didn’t know what to say to him. As the silence lengthened, I finally said, “Are you okay?”
“No.” He gave me a weak grin. “No, I’m not okay. I talked to Greg last night—oh, don’t worry, I didn’t tell him about the other night. No, Greg called to tell me that he’d made up his mind. He’s moving the business to Atlanta permanently.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, feeling like an idiot. “Are you going to move?”
“I told Greg my business—and my life—were here, so no, I am not moving to Atlanta.” He buried his face in his hands. “We pretty much decided to, um, end things between us. So much for eighteen years together.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, and he took it with one of his. “Don’t worry,” he went on with a slight laugh. “I’m not going to start blubbering or anything like that. I mean, the truth is our relationship was pretty much over for a while now, and neither one of us wanted to admit it, you know what I mean? It was comfortable, but we weren’t getting what we needed from each other anymore.”
“Where are you going to live?”
“Well, Greg can’t sell the house—it’s a living trust. And he’d already talked to his sister; she doesn’t want it either. So, I get to keep living there.”
“That’s pretty nice of him.”
“He’s not an asshole, Chanse,” he replied sharply. “He’s not going to throw me out and leave me without a place to live.”
“I didn’t—”
“I’m sorry.” He interrupted me with a sigh. “I know you didn’t. I’m a little off this morning—it’s a bit much to take.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t sleep well… Of course, with this new storm out there, it’s no wonder.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Is this fucking season ever going to end?”
I felt a knot forming in my stomach. “There’s another storm out there?”
He nodded. “Yeah, they’re saying it could be Katrina-sized. It’s going to turn into a hurricane in a day or two—Wilma. And she’s going to head into the Gulf most likely.”
“It won’t come here.” I said, my hands starting to tremble. Jesus fucking Christ. The levees were only patched, not repaired—and there was no way the patch job would hold if another major storm came onto the lake or, God forbid, up the river and overtopped those levees. If that happened, that would be it. The 10 percent of the city that didn’t flood was on the high ground along the river. If the river levees went— that would be it for New Orleans. “It can’t come here.”
“Yeah, well.” He stood up, wiping his palms on his knees. “I guess I’ll head back to the gym. I just wanted to stop by and let you know—about me and Greg.” He awkwardly reached out his hand. “I also wanted to let you know that I—um, I don’t have any expectations of anything from you. We can just go back to being friends, if that’s okay with you.”
I looked at him, then at his outstretched hand. His lower lip was quivering, just a bit, and his eyes were glistening. He looked like he was holding himself together with baling wire and duct tape. I stepped close to him and gave him a big hug. He stiffened for a moment, and then he put his arms around me and started to cry.
Sometimes it’s a good thing when you can’t think of anything to say. I just stood there and held him while his body shuddered with his sobs and his grief. I felt my own eyes starting to fill, as I thought about everything I too had lost over the last year. Even though I knew in my gut the city would recover, that New Orleans would again be the city it once was, it was hard sometimes when faced with the everyday horror that life in the city had become. And even if this Wilma went somewhere else, if the city continued to rebuild and find its way back to its former self, Paul was still gone.
After a few minutes, Allen pulled away from me and wiped at his face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to break down.”
I wiped at my own face and laughed. “Dude, it’s okay.”
“Well, thanks.” He stroked my arm. “Take it easy, okay?”
“Can I call you later?”
“Yeah.” He smiled at me. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
He walked out of the apartment and I watched him get into his car and drive away.
*
I went back inside and was just about to get on my computer and do a search for information on the Upstairs Lounge fire when my cell phone rang.
“Chanse!” It was Barbara. “I just heard. Are you all right, dear? Did they ta
ke anything?”
“I’m fine. And no, they didn’t steal anything. I don’t know what they were looking for.”
“Well, I have a locksmith coming over to put in a new deadbolt. He should be there in about an hour or so. But I have some good news for you.”
“I could use some.”
“I tracked down Eric Valmont.” She laughed.
“Who?”
“Chanse, really. You need to stop smoking pot. Your memory is atrocious. He was a friend of Michael’s, remember? I told you about him…he was an art critic.”
“Oh. Sorry about that.”
“I had to listen to his mother go on and on for about an hour about how worried she’s been about him—but he’s back in New Orleans. He lives down in the Marigny, and I gave him a call. He said he’d be happy to talk to you about Michael Mercereau.” She inhaled sharply. “The problem is he’s planning to head back up to Hammond later this afternoon to stay with his mother a few days.”
“I’ll head right over there. What’s the address?” She gave it to me, and I wrote it down. “But what if the locksmith comes while I’m gone? I don’t really feel comfortable leaving the apartment open.”
“Oh, I’ll send Jasper over.” Jasper was her driver. “He’ll wait there for the locksmith—and if you aren’t back before the locksmith is finished, he can just leave the new keys for the front door for you on the kitchen counter.”
“You are way too good to me, Barbara.”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” She laughed. “And don’t ever forget it.” She hung up.
I went outside to wait for Jasper.
Chapter Fifteen
Eric Valmont’s house was in the last block of Dauphine Street before Frenchmen, in what was called the Marigny triangle—a name that’s never really made a lot of sense to me.
The Marigny district, on the lake side of Elysian Fields, had not gotten water; I’d been told that the flood stopped at Elysian Fields. I was pleased to see that the little Frenchmen Deli’s OPEN sign was lit up, even though everything else on Frenchmen was dark. Frenchmen Street in the time before the storm had been going through a Renaissance—turning itself into a smaller version of Bourbon Street with bars, restaurants, and music venues. There was also a tattoo parlor and a bike shop. Even with the renewal, the area still seemed a little derelict in the daylight. There weren’t any real trees on Frenchmen Street, and it a lot of pavement and telephone wires seemed to hang low over the street. Some of the buildings remained vacant. Regardless, at any time of night or day, there were always people milling about on its dirty sidewalks, and finding a place to park was next to impossible. Now, there was no one around and there was parking everywhere. There were piles of debris almost everywhere I looked, along with the occasional refrigerator with a nasty message for the federal government written in magic marker on the front.
Paige was right. Refrigerator art was the new art form of the city.
I pulled up in front of Washington Square and gawked at what was going on at the park. There were at least twenty, maybe thirty people inside the black wrought-iron fence that circled the park. There were tents set up everywhere, and in one place a huge vat of something was cooking over an open fire. I got out of my car and locked it, taking a closer look at the crowd. It looked like a makeshift soup kitchen—or the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert. I wasn’t sure what to make of the crowd inside—they all appeared to be relatively young. The average age of the people apparently camping out there seemed to be about twenty-three—and they were the kind of kids we used to refer to before the storm as the gutter punks. They were all white kids, their arms, necks, and bare legs covered with tattoos and piercings. Most of them had their hair in dreadlocks, and they all looked like they hadn’t bathed in weeks. Some were playing Frisbee with equally ratty looking dogs. Maybe they’re here to help out, I thought for a moment, in that way that kids do—not wanting to deal with an organized group like the Red Cross, just rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.
But they didn’t seem to be doing anything other than hanging out.
I stood there for a moment, watching them, before heading around the corner and finding Eric Valmont’s address.
There were trees on Dauphine Street, so it didn’t look as bare as Frenchmen. The houses were closer together, the way they are in the Quarter, with narrow passages guarded by gates between them. Dauphine was one of the first streets in the Marigny to get the “extreme makeover” treatment, and even though there was still a house here and there that looked like it might be blighted or a haven for crackheads, overall the street had come back nicely. It looked deserted now, and some of the houses had those horrible painted crosses on them, but I was also pleased to see that no bodies—human or animal—had been found on the street.
Eric’s house was a single shotgun on the uptown side of the street, about four houses down from the corner. Ironically, it was one of the houses I would have picked as blighted. It was badly in need of paint, having once been painted that orange-coral shade that was fairly prevalent in the Quarter, which helped give the city a Caribbean flavor. The front porch sagged a bit to the left where a wheelchair lift had been mounted. There was a wooden gate on the right of the house with razor wire looped over the top of it. There was a beat-up blue Toyota Corolla parked in front, behind the HANDICAPPED PARKING sign mounted beside a towering oak tree. I climbed the steps, which groaned under my weight, and rang the bell. I heard footsteps inside, and then the door opened.
“Yes?”
I stood there and gaped for a few moments. The man who’d opened the door was one of the most gorgeous young men I’d ever laid eyes on. He was about five-ten, maybe one hundred and fifty pounds of lean muscle. He had short black hair with blond highlights, green eyes, and perfectly white even teeth showing in a wide smile in his tanned face. He was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt reading I stayed for Katrina and all I got was this lousy T-shirt…and a plasma TV…and a Cadillac… and a new computer… There was a tattoo of St. Sebastian pierced by arrows on his right bicep. Veins bulged out on his tan arms. He was wearing a loose-fitting pair of jeans that hung low enough on his hips to reveal not only the trail of curly black hairs disappearing down into the red waistband of his Calvin Klein underwear but the flat defined muscle of his lower abs. He looked like he was barely out of high school. His face was open and friendly.
I laughed. “That’s a great shirt. Where did you get it?”
His smile widened. “I know, huh? I got it at this little shop on Magazine Street near Aiden Gill. It might be in bad taste, but I thought it was funny.”
“It is.”
“You must be Chanse MacLeod.” He stuck out his right hand for me to shake. “I’m Devon; I work for Eric. We’ve been expecting you. Do come in. Can I get something for you to drink?” His voice was deep with a friendly lilt to it, with just a smidgen of the outer parish accent.
“Um, I’m fine.” I finally managed to get the words out somehow. “Thanks.” I stepped past him into the dim interior. He flicked a light switch and the room filled with light from a dusty chandelier hung in the center of the room, suspended from a fourteen-foot ceiling, which bore more than a few water stains. It was a large room, with a comfortable-looking worn sofa and some reclining chairs arranged around a coffee table piled high with magazines and art books. None of the furniture matched, which seemed a little odd to me. The bare floor was covered with a worn and dusty Oriental rug. A cat yawned and stretched from atop a pile of books on a dusty end table. A plasma TV hung on the wall over the mantelpiece. I couldn’t tell what color the room was painted because every inch of the walls was covered with framed artwork. Paintings, black-and-white photography, and lithographs hung everywhere the eye could see. The pocket doors opposite were pulled open. The next room was much the same—spare furnishings, but the walls were covered with art.
“Make yourself comfortable.” Devon shut the front door behind him. “I’ll see what’s keeping Eric.”
He gave me that wide smile again, and I watched him walk through the next room to the back of the house. He walked lightly on the balls of his feet and on his way through the room he picked up the cat and carried it out with him.
I glanced over the books on the huge coffee table: Bruce Webber, Greg Gorman, Tom Bianchi, and a bunch of other names I didn’t recognize. The magazines ran the full range from Louisiana Cultural Vistas to New Orleans to Modern Photography, the New Yorker, and various other publications I’d never heard of. A half-empty water bottle sat on a mosaic-tiled coaster and on the other side of the table a huge mug of coffee looked like it had been sitting there for a day or two. I was more than a little surprised. It wasn’t like any home of an elder gay man with money I’d ever been in—those usually are decorated in what I call gay museum style and looked like no one ever lived in them. This place, on the other hand, looked comfortable and lived-in. I smiled to myself. Obviously, Eric Valmont was not a neat freak.
I liked him already.
I sat back and crossed my legs, and then I heard a rolling sound. I looked up and saw an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair rolling through the other room. He was completely bald, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, a wide smile, and pince-nez-style glasses perched on his nose. His eyes flashed with intelligence and warmth. A knitted comforter covered his legs, but his broad shoulders and thick arms were evident beneath the red-and-black flannel shirt he was wearing. He maneuvered himself into the living room and held out his hand. “Don’t get up—I’m sitting so it would be rude for me to expect you to get up.” He laughed. “And besides, you look like a rather tall one. I don’t want to get neck strain looking up at you.”
His grip was strong, and I smiled back at him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Valmont. Thanks for agreeing to see me—especially on such short notice.”